It is 80 years since two atomic bombs were detonated in Japan, one over Hiroshima and another over Nagasaki.
On August 6, 1945, at 8.15 am, the first of these bombs, dubbed the Enola Gay, fell on Hiroshima and left an estimated 69,000 dead bodies. Then on 19 August, at 11.02 am, the second bomb, called Fat Man, was dropped on Nagasaki, taking 39,000 lives. At the epicentre, in 3000 C degree heat, human beings like us were incinerated alive. Dying of burns is an excruciating way to die. I came to Japan as a Columban priest-missionary in 1956, 69 years ago. I met A-bomb survivors, some of them suffering from radiation sickness. Their faces had an unhealthy yellow tinge. Some spoke of the guilt they still felt more than a decade after the war had ended for not answering the desperate cries for water of the more seriously wounded and dying.
A survivor asked me to offer Mass for some of his family members who died because of the bomb. At the prayers of the faithful, he read out the names of 19 relatives. An estimated 10,000 Catholics in Nagasaki died from the bomb. The city has been the centre of the old Christians since St Francis Xavier’s time.
In recent decades, Japan has joined the prosperous developed countries of the world. And most people, Japanese included, have forgotten the desperate post-war conditions in the country. When I first came to Japan, the people were still much affected by the trauma of war and the death, destruction, and poverty that had come in its wake. Poverty was prevalent, especially outside the big cities. In my first mission assignment, as an assistant pastor in Chiba prefecture, I would distribute food and clothing each Friday to the poorest of the poor. There were seven tuberculosis sanatoriums in the area. Limbless former soldiers dressed in white begged for help outside the railway stations.
I went to Nagasaki and visited the Atom Bomb Memorial Museum. The photos of burned victims were horrendous, of course. But what really touched me was a small child’s tricycle, burnt and twisted. It personalised the destructiveness and lethality of ONE bomb. I left the museum sickened and indeed angry. In that turbulent mood, I walked a short distance to a small wooden hut. For three years after the war, Doctor Takashi Paul Nagai lived there with his two children. He later became bedridden with radiation sickness affecting his liver. From that tiny wooden hut, Doctor Nagai campaigned for peace and reconciliation, not recrimination. Behind Nagai’s hut, there is now a small, tasteful museum. Doctor Nagai’s son, Makoto, guided me through the exhibits. On later visits, I was shown around by his grandson, Tokusaburo.
In the Bomb Museum, it had been that tricycle that touched me; here, it was a tiny, melted pile that had once been a rosary. This rosary had often been in the hands of Doctor Nagai’s beloved wife, Midori, who was killed instantly in the atomic blast.
Accompanying this exhibit was a poignant sketch by Doctor Nagai himself, showing his wife going to heaven on a mushroom-shaped atomic cloud. By the time I left that small museum, my anger had been replaced by hope. Thanks to Doctor Nagai, I felt and still feel motivated to be an instrument of Christ’s peace.
All these years later, the number of atomic bomb survivors (hibakusha in Japanese) has dwindled to only a few. But these few have continued to raise their voices and were awarded the 2024 Nobel Peace Prize.
In the interviews afterwards, the survivor representatives emphasised that a nuclear bomb is radically different from a conventional bomb. Just one nuclear bomb kills a massive number of people indiscriminately. There is no distinction made between military and civilian targets. The International Peace Research Institute of Stockholm estimates that the nine nuclear-armed nations possess 12,121 nuclear weapons among them.
The prayerful plea of Doctor Nagai was: “May there be peace! Let Nagasaki be the last atomic bomb.”
Columban Fr Barry Cairns lives and works in Japan.
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